Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN!
Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2015.

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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Update on My MyHeritage Record Matches

MyHeritage provides users a list of pending, confirmed and rejected matches for persons in a MyHeritage family tree that are found in record databases available with a MyHeritage Data subscription. Here is the top of my MyHeritage Record Matches list, showing the possible matches in record databases that have tree persons.

I still have 11,290 Pending Matches in a total of 47 databases. I haven't done any in WikiTree (because most of them are for my own entries in WikiTree), but I have confirmed or rejected hundreds of them in NewspaperARCHIVE and thousands of them in Find A Grave. I've also done quite a few in several other databases.

The Record Match process has three steps to save them to the MyHeritage family tree:

* Review your record matches,
* Confirm the correct matches to save them to your tree
* Extract their information to our tree using their new tools.

When reviewing matches, users can select a confidence level in the filtering options - from 0 to 5 stars, in half-star increments. Here is the "Filtering options" screen for the Find A Grave database, with all of the Status boxes (pending, confirmed, rejected) for a one-half star confidence level:

When I started working with Find A Grave, I had 2,643 record matches. Now, I have confirmed 2,608 of them, and rejected 35 of them (because they were not the right person). That's with a one-half star confidence level (meaning, I think, that there is at least one point of agreement between my tree information and the database record, such as name, birth date, birth location, death date, death location, etc.)

If I go down to a zero star confidence level, I have 2,738 possible matches in the Record Match list, 2,631 have been confirmed, 47 of them have been rejected, and 60 are pending. I still need to work on those 60 possible matches.

Here is the top of the remaining 60 matches list:

My tree information is in the left-hand column, and the historical record information is in the right-hand column. When I click on the link for the historical record, I see the MyHeritage summary of the record:

I can click through to the actual Find A Grave record for the person above:

As you can see, in this case, the record database has much more information on this person than I had before I received the Record Match. I can also click on the spouse and children in the view above to add more persons if I wish.

I have been extracting the information to my MyHeritage tree for my ancestors, but not for persons not my ancestors. I also use the Find A Grave information to enter information in my RootsMagic database. I can do 15 to 20 Record Matches in an hour, adding information to my database, confirming and extracting, or rejecting, matches, etc. It's taken over a year to get the Find A Grave match number from 2,738 to 60, but I'm almost there. In the process, I've been able to add a wealth of data to my database, especially for 20th century persons, and thousands of source citations.

One of the screens above says that Find A Grave has 97.9 million entries that MyHeritage is accessing. A lock at the Find A Grave home page now says they have 112 million entries, so MyHeritage may update the Record Matches at regular intervals. Other databases won't need to be updated because they are not updated (e.g., U.s. census records).

A problem that I have is that, since my MyHeritage tree is a static tree that I don't update on a regular basis, it doesn't have the latest additions of persons and event data since I uploaded the tree. I have no idea how I can update the MyHeritage tree. If I GEDCOM my RootsMagic tree into Family Tree Builder, then upload it as a new tree to MyHeritage, the Record Match counter will start over and I will have to confirm or reject all of what I have done before.

I really like the MyHeritage Record Match feature, and appreciate the record data extraction feature that attaches record links and information to a person in my MyHeritage tree. It is a database-oriented feature, which I find much easier to use than person-oriented record hints as on Ancestry.com.

Disclosure: I have a complimentary MyHeritage Tree and Data collection subscription, and greatly appreciate them. I was not asked to write this post, and my posts and opinions are not influenced by the complimentary subscription.

2 comments:

I have the same issue as you do...I know I have a lot of people that are not in my My Heritage tree. I'm wondering if there is a way to do this within their free software. I have not used it but it might be worth a look.

Thanks for this informative post. Your "how tos" with software and websites are so helpful. They also help me to make my software and search sites work harder. So I was wondering how you use fold3. I use it almost exclusively for Civil War research, primarily pension records, CMSR's, and a few memorial pages for "cousin bait." I would be interested to know what some of your best finds on fold3 have been and how you make use of the various sections on it. Thank you.

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About Me

I am a native San Diegan, a graduate of San Diego State University, a retired aerospace engineer, a genealogist and a family guy.
My wife (Angel Linda) and I have two lovely daughters, and four darling grandchildren. We love to visit them and have them visit us.
Angel Linda and I love to travel to visit friends and relatives, to sightsee, to cruise or to do genealogy. Our travels have taken us all over the USA, to England, Down Under and Scandinavia.
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Contact me via email at randy.seaver@gmail.com